Anna Sees All
by DarkDamson
Summary: Lilianna is a spinnesehen, a spider who sees. She sees hearts and minds, futures and pasts with her many eyes, but that makes her mind a bit ... different. A misunderstanding puts a Grimm on her trail for two gruesome murders. Action & a little fluff. Told from OC point of view. Takes place off screen during the episode Tarantella. Sequels: Anna's Favorite Grimm & Anna & the Prince
1. Panic

Anna Sees All

Liliana, or Anna as everyone called her these days, kept six of her eight eyes firmly closed as she meticulously dusted and organized the props of her profession. The crystal balls, Indian artifacts, arcane goddess symbols and mysterious-looking knickknacks that covered the shelves in her public work space were just that, props. She didn't need any of it to see that which others couldn't see. Instead, the props led others to see in her what they expected.

Most of the junk simply collected dust, although she liked the pretty scarves that draped the walls, the shelves and the round table in the center of the room. She collected the scarves from vintage clothing stores. She wore a plain leotard and loose skirts and blouses that she made from those same scarves. It was the same thing she always wore. Silk and velvet, bright colors and patterns, sparkles and beads. They were a lovely distraction from the dark images that sometimes invaded the tangled labyrinths of her mind. The silken feeling of them on her skin helped to anchor her in the here and now when otherwise she might wander. She found normal clothes intolerable for the most part anyway. The labels always scratched her or the seams pinched, distracting her until she could think of nothing else.

A knock came at her door, the public outside door on one end of the rectangular room that had been her formal dining room before she converted it to her business. Above that door on the outside where it faced a road was a big sign with crescent moons and stars. The sign said, "Anna Sees All." The inner door on the other end of the room led into her home. No one ever went in there but her.

Liliana cocked her head to one side in confusion. She was not expecting any customers this morning. She was very certain that her first appointment wasn't until 1:00. She looked at some of her many antique clocks. They all said 9:34 exactly, as they should. Their tick tock ticking was soothing to her nerves, jangled by the unexpected break in routine. She loved her clocks.

Perhaps it was a customer who came on impulse, or one who wished to schedule an appointment in person, rather than over the phone.

Liliana carefully put on her human face that could see with only two eyes, and opened her door. She dragged her two human eyes up for just a moment to meet the eyes of the people there. It was hard, looking people in the eyes, but both of her mothers had taught her that she must do it anyway. It was an important social rule. She knew that customers in particular wanted eye contact.

Two men stood at her door, both very fit. One was dark-skinned and more heavily muscular with a wisp of beard on his chin. The other was pale-skinned with night dark hair, sharp cheek bones, and lovely thick-lashed blue eyes.

Her gaze dropped sideways and her head tilted as she considered. These men did not seem like customers. She considered woging to her spider form, and opening another pair of eyes to look at them properly, but hesitated, not wanting to see the ugly twists of dark hearts if they were not good men. If they were bad men come to rob her or worse, then they would soon be very, very surprised, and then, most likely, they would be dead.

Perhaps, if she waited, the men would tell her who they were and why they knocked on her door.

The smaller, light-skinned man pulled a badge out and held it up. She saw the golden flash of it out of the corner of her sight, too nervous around the strangers to properly look at it, or at him. He was a policeman, but not in a uniform. "I'm Detective Nick Burkhardt and this is my partner, Detective Hank Griffon. We'd like to ask you a few questions."

"Questions," she repeated. Liliana struggled to parse the information. Communication was always a challenge. This didn't seem too bad, though. They had given her the information she wanted. They were police and they wanted to ask her questions. She waited for them to ask. Everyone came to her to ask questions. That was a situation she understood.

"Yes," the detective confirmed. There was a pause while Liliana waited for them to say more. The two policemen seemed to be waiting for something as well. Was there a social rule she was forgetting? Social rules were so complex and subtle. They confused Liliana all the time.

The dark detective looked up at the sky.

Liliana looked up as well. It was a normal drizzly, chili Portland day. There didn't seem to be anything unusual about the sky.

"Um, ma'am, could we come in?" the dark detective asked. Hank. His name was Hank Griffon. Should she call him Hank? Was that acceptable? She thought there was a rule that you called policemen officer, or in this case, detective.

"Oh. Yes, Detective Hank, Detective Nick. You can come in." People liked to sit at the table when they asked questions, not stand on the doorstep, but they didn't come in until invited. She had forgotten to invite them.

Liliana opened her door. She bowed gracefully and gestured the men into her public space. The dramatic motions were expected from seers. It was the one aspect of the part she played that came naturally to her.

She hadn't finished cleaning and organizing. The largest crystal ball was two inches to the left of the center of the table where it belonged. Liliana hastily fixed that. It made her uncomfortable that people were in her space unexpectedly when it wasn't properly prepared for them.

The two men really filled a lot of space. They stood among her scarves and arcane knickknacks and looked around curiously. The light one, Nick Burkhardt, picked up a tiny, very detailed statue of a tarantula that her mother had made. It was, of all the things in this room, the one thing that actually mattered to her. No one else had ever touched it.

Liliana made a small whimper of distress in the back of her throat. People weren't supposed to just pick up her things. She was sure there was a social rule against that. She never picked up other people's things without asking.

Nick hastily set the little statue down. "Sorry."

She picked up the delicate statue and held it to her heart, cradling it.

The men needed to stop standing in her space touching her things. If they would sit, they would take up less space. "Sit down," she said and knew it had come out more as an order than an invitation. Her voice tended to be flat instead of nuanced with emotions like other people's. She recognized the flaw, but couldn't consistently imitate the way other people spoke.

She added a graceful gesture of invitation with one arm, accented by the flowing scarves that made up her blouse. The customers seemed to like the addition of dramatic gestures. It made them feel more as if they were getting their money's worth. Liliana might not be good with voices, but physically, she could be as graceful as any ballet dancer. She had learned to dance on the high lines of a circus when she was young.

Liliana placed the little spider carefully on a high shelf, away from where the men might touch it again, and lightly sat down opposite them at the little round table with the crystal ball in the center. Now, she was a little more comfortable, in her element. She could stare at the crystal ball and watch the men from the corner of her two human eyes. They wouldn't feel insulted. It was expected for her to stare at the ball with its bright reflections of the many colors in the room.

Liliana launched into her usual intro speech. Police didn't normally come to her, but they had questions, so treating them like customers seemed like the simplest thing to do. In a dramatic singsong that she had memorized, she said, "Anna sees all. Pay me what you feel is fair for truth that cannot be seen by other eyes. I see only what is, what has been, and what might be. Ask and the truth shall be yours."

Liliana waited. This was usually when the customers told her what their questions were.

The two men looked at each other. Amused smiles played around their lips. Hank rolled his eyes.

Ah, these were men who did not believe. They came here expecting a charlatan's show.

Liliana looked at Hank, woged, and opened her third set of eyes, the ones that see into the mind and heart. They sat just below her human eyes. She was correct. Hank believed Liliana was a charlatan.

She peered more closely into his memories, to find something that she could tell him about himself that she should not know about a man who simply showed up on her doorstep out of the blue. "You have loved unwisely, Detective Hank. Four times, you chose forever, but forever didn't last." Liliana opened her fourth eyes, the ones that saw what was not in front of them, to see his current and near future loves. Did he intend to marry a fifth time? "A beautiful beast seeks your heart." Liliana wondered what would be the result of the hexenbiest that sought after the dark detective. She saw him lying in a bed, eyes red with a witch's poison, dying. The vision was close in time and very likely to come to pass by its clarity.

Liliana gasped in unintentional reaction. The policeman had a good heart, brave and honest. She did not want him to die. "Detective Hank," she warned him, forgetting to use her dramatic customer voice. "Don't eat the cookies."

Hank looked amused and confused at the same time. "Aren't you supposed to tell me that I'm going to meet the girl of my dreams?"

Liliana controlled her voice back into the singsong that was expected of seers. "I see only what is, not what you might wish to be. Someday, perhaps, you will meet such a girl." Liliana looked into his future with her fourth eyes, the ones just above the center of her brows, angled like a cat's, but there were flashes of many women, all flickering with unlikely possibility. "You may one day find love, but not soon."

She saw another cruelly laughing image of the beautiful hexenbeist that stalked Hank, stronger than any other female image. "The golden beast seeks your death, not your love." She didn't want Hank to die because he thought Liliana was the usual charlatan. She dropped the customer voice, and did something she rarely did. She reached across the table and touched the back of Hank's hand lightly with her fingertips. "Heed the warning. What I see is truth. Her beauty is poisonous."

Liliana closed all her eyes quickly, as flashes of Hank and the beast entwined invaded her mind. She didn't want to see that. She couldn't tell if her warning would have any effect, or if she had communicated it correctly and strongly enough so that the nice policeman would know how to avoid his ugly death. She hoped so, but she didn't want to look in case she had failed.

She woged back to her human face.

Liliana stared down at the tablecloth and stroked the fabric, using the texture to soothe her mind. The images of the man in front of her dying would not leave her mind. Visions like that were why she kept her eyes closed a lot of the time.

The other detective, Nick, cleared his throat. "Ma'am, we didn't actually come here to ask about Hank's bad taste in women."

"Of course, detectives. You have questions." Lilianna waited again, staring into the crystal with her human eyes, simply so she would have a safe place to look.

"Right." The two men exchanged another glance.

They were friends, these two. Liliana saw the close bonding of two who faced danger side by side, and protected each other. Liliana didn't need any more than her human eyes to see that.

"We're investigating two murders. We thought you might be able to help us," Detective Nick said.

Liliana stood up suddenly and walked to a shelf, turning her back to the policemen. She had several new scarves on the shelf next to the door. She had meant to fold them or hang them before her customer came at 1:00. They were in an untidy disorganized pile. She picked one up and ran it through her fingers. Burnout velvet was her favorite. The sensation of silky then velvety cloth trailing between her fingers calmed her. "The police don't usually come here. No one asks me to look at murders. I don't want to look at murders."

Nick got up and followed Liliana to the corner of the room, crowding her space uncomfortably. "It's all right," he said softly. "You don't have to look at the murders. We just wanted to ask you where you were last night and two nights ago. Did you go to an art show two nights ago?"

"I like to look at art when no one else is around."

Detective Nick's voice sounded confused. "So, does that mean you went there, or not?"

"Art shows are always filled with people. Too many people. I don't go to art shows."

"Then I suppose you also didn't go to a night club last night?"

Liliana snorted, still facing the door that led into the rest of her house, back still turned to the policeman with the pretty eyes. She wasn't supposed to talk to people with her back to them. She knew that rule. "I don't like night clubs even more. I never go to night clubs."

She took a deep breath to steady herself and turned around, still holding the burnout velvet scarf. It was a pretty deep green, one of her favorite colors. She could look at the scarf while she ran it through her fingers and it would be all right. They weren't going to make her look at murdered people.

"Where were you last night, and two nights ago?" the detective asked.

"I was here." Liliana gestured to the door that led into her home.

"Is there anyone who could verify that?"

"I was alone. No one comes in my house. I don't like people touching my things." Liliana tilted her head to one side, confused. "Usually, when men ask about things like art shows and night clubs and my house, they want to have sex with me. Do you want to have sex with me, Detective Nick?" The detective was handsome on the outside. If he looked as nice as Hank inside, she might enjoy having sex with him. She hadn't had a lover in some time.

Nick cleared his throat and took a step back from her. "No! I mean, that's not um, I mean, I don't .. uh , not that you're not pretty or anything, but …"

She had made him uncomfortable. She probably said something inappropriate. There were so many rules about talking about sex. She had given up a long time ago on trying to figure them all out.

Hank laughed. "Give it up, dude. There's no good answer to that one."

The two men looked at each other again. She had made a mistake, missed something obvious to them. She replayed the conversation in her mind for a moment trying to spot where her understanding had gone wrong. Their questions weren't about her. They were about murders. "Did the murders happen last night and two nights ago?"

Hank stood. "Ma'am, we're sorry we bothered you. We'll be going now."

"Okay." Liliana was relieved, but still very confused.

"Not just yet," Nick said. They seemed to be having an unspoken disagreement. "Have you ever heard of people being killed by having their dissolved insides sucked out?"

"Nick!" Hank said and grabbed Nick's arm. "The lady is clearly a little …" Hank circled a finger around his ear and mouthed "crazy." Liliana continued to look down at the scarf so he probably thought she didn't see, but Liliana always saw. "… busy," he said out loud.

"I am not crazy, Detective Hank," Liliana said. "The word people use is Aspberger's. It's not really right about me, but it's a better word than crazy. I'm not crazy." Her older sister had been unable to adapt when her fourth eyes opened. She had gone irrecoverably insane. Liliana's mother had had to slay her own child. Liliana had seen it with her own fourth eyes, even though it happened decades before she was born. An insane spinnesehen was deadly dangerous and could not be allowed to live. She had to show these detectives that she wasn't crazy.

Liliana turned to Nick, and forced herself to look at him directly for a second before her gaze dropped again. "Yes, I have heard of people being killed in that way, Detective Nick. Did you ask me because you thought I killed them?" Liliana wondered if these policemen posed a threat to her. That would be sad for them. She had seen enough of Hank's mind and heart that she would not want to hurt him. He was a good man. But she would not let anyone put her in a cage.

"You look a lot like the woman we suspect, ma'am." Nick, the policeman with the pretty eyes, stepped closer to her and looked at her intensely. She dropped her eyes back to the scarf. His stare made her uncomfortable, like he was trying to tell her something without words.

Was he wesen? Had he seen her spider eyes when she woged and opened them to look at Hank? Hank was human. She had seen him with all her eyes, so she was certain.

She woged, and opened her eyes, all of them, and looked at Nick.

Terror hit her in the gut like a kick. A Grimm.

And he suspected her of murder. It didn't matter that she hadn't done it. He would kill her.

Her mother told her stories of the Grimms when she was young. When her fourth eyes first opened, she had looked into the past and seen the truth of the stories. Throughout history, in all lands, Grimms killed wesen brutally and without mercy. Many of her childhood nightmares had been of Grimms coming to get her. She still had those nightmares sometimes. A lot lately, in fact. It might have been traces of visions from the part of her mind that processed images from her fourth eyes trying to warn her that a Grimm really was coming to get her.

A few months before, when one of her wesen customers told her that there was now a Grimm in Portland, she had almost uprooted her cozy life and moved, right then. Grimms terrified her.

Faced with a real life Grimm who thought she was a killer, Liliana threw the scarf in the Grimm's face and bolted through the door behind her into her home.

The Grimm chased her, but Liliana was faster and more agile than any human, even a Grimm, and she knew the layout of her home intimately. The Grimm did not. She leapt lightly over furniture and danced around corners.

While Nick, the Grimm, stumbled over her couch, Liliana slipped out the front door. She slammed it shut behind her. It gave her a few seconds out of the Grimm's sight.

Liliana threw her slippers out into the quiet neighborhood street that she lived on. She knew everyone else was at their normal 9 to 5 jobs about now. No one would see her.

Liliana leapt straight up, caught the edge of the roof, flipped her legs up and back, and landed lightly on her bare feet on the wet shingle roof of her little house. She flattened herself against the roof so she was invisible from the ground, and opened her fourth eyes so she could watch the Grimm without being seen.

Nick ran out her door a moment later, saw her slippers in the street and ran in that direction, as she had intended. Hank ran out the door right after. He raced on the Grimm's heels.

While they ran around her neighborhood, she ran in the other direction, along rooftops at first, then down to ground level so she wouldn't draw too much attention. Liliana opened her human eyes so she could see where she was going. Simultaneously, she kept her fourth eyes open to watch what the policemen did.

It was difficult to focus on both at once. Different parts of her mind dealt with the two different images. It was part of what made her strange to others. The ability to see in multiple ways at once meant that her mind resembled four minds that worked together. Her mind was different because it had to be.

Her fourth eyes saw in a completely different way from all other eyes. Flashes of what might be and what had been could mix and wander through the visions of what was. It had taken her decades to learn to focus on a single thing or person. Now, it was almost as if she simultaneously walked down the street far from the Grimm and his partner, and walked beside the men.

The detectives realized quickly that they had lost her.

They walked back to her house, discussing her. "Do you seriously think this rain man girl is our perp, Nick?"

The Grimm nodded. "She fits the description and she has no alibi." He did not mention that she was spider wesen and the victims were killed by a death spider, but Liliana knew that was the real reason the Grimm believed she was the killer. His partner was an ordinary human. Hank might not even know about wesen.

"Yeah, but half the women in Portland fit that description. What made you even think she might be the one?"

Liliana cocked her head to one side as she walked briskly, putting more distance between her and the Grimm that hunted her. It was a good question Hank asked.

"Anonymous tip," Nick said, but it had the ring of falsehood. She couldn't follow his thoughts with her third eyes unless he was in front of her, so she couldn't find out who had put a Grimm on her tail. It was a good question, though.

Liliana's first thought was to leave town, disappear, create a new identity. She hadn't moved in three decades, not since her second mother died. She liked Portland. She liked her pleasant routine and her cozy little house. Her business had a steady enough clientele that she lived comfortably. Most of her customers were from the local wesen community, but many were normal humans who believed in her.

She liked her customers. She watched over them. She guided them away from danger and toward happiness. It was a good job.

What would she do if she left? Join a circus again?

Her lips curled into a grimace of distaste involuntarily. She had grown up in the circus, but she hated the chaos of the circus life, always moving, always travelling. She liked routine and stability. It was comforting. She liked her cozy little house on her cozy little street.

Liliana sighed and pulled the thin scarves around her shoulders. It was cold and wet. She was barefoot and had no coat.

First, she would find a safe dry place, then she would figure out what to do about the Grimm.


	2. Grimm Trap

Chapter 2 Grimm Trap

Liliana lay waiting high in the rafters of the empty warehouse she had found. The place was dark inside, despite the sun still shining outside. The building had no lights at all, no power to the building and no windows. She shivered a little. Her feet felt like icicles against the steel girders. At least she was out of the rain.

She watched with her second set of eyes that saw in darkness and in light spectrums that humans couldn't see, the eyes on her temples. To her, the warehouse might as well have been flooded with sunshine. Her second eyes also expanded her peripheral vision until she could see in nearly every direction simultaneously. The difficulty of mastering those eyes had been in learning to merge the two distinct images and interpret the new spectrums. Each new set of eyes had been more and more challenging to master.

Liliana remembered exploring an alien landscape of disjointed colors she had no name for when she was a child of ten. Until then, she had seen with human eyes and her mind developed like other children. That was the first time she really began to learn what it meant to be spinnesehen, to see as no one else did meant to think as no one else did. Each decade of her life until after her thirtieth year had meant having to learn again to see and think and understand like a newborn baby, and to integrate that new understanding into the rest of her mind. Each decade, just as she had begun to adjust, another new blow would send her back to the beginning.

Her thirtieth year had been the hardest. When she first opened her fourth set of eyes, she had been flooded with so many disjointed maddening unrelenting images of everything at once that she had gotten lost. She had withdrawn so far into herself that her second mother had had to feed her and dress her like a baby for several years.

With all of that, Liliana had been luckier than her older sister. An insane spinnesehen could not be allowed to live. They could be deadly dangerous to everyone around them. Her first mother told her stories of an insane spinnesehen who had slaughtered hundreds of humans and wesen before the Grimms killed her from ambush.

Liliana knew that some people thought her insane, but she wasn't insane. And she wasn't a murderer. The Grimm had no reason to come after her. She would have to convince the Grimm of that. Or kill him. He was only one Grimm, alone, and she was spinnesehen.

It hadn't been difficult to set the trap. She stole a phone from a passing stranger with quick light fingers. She watched the Grimm and his partner from a distance with her fourth eyes until Hank pulled out his phone to call Nick. Once she had seen the Grimm's phone number, she waited until he was alone and called him. It was that simple.

"Burkhardt. Who is this?"

"You are the Grimm who seeks the spider wesen who murders men?" she said more than asked.

"Who is this?"

"I am the woman you spoke to this morning. You asked me if I liked art shows or night clubs. Face me as a Grimm, and we will settle this. Come alone or I will disappear again."

She gave him the address of the warehouse, hung up, and waited.

She watched the Grimm with her fourth eyes, making certain that he did, in fact, come alone. He made an excuse to his partner and drove to a tiny silver trailer before he came. The trailer was filled with things that made her shudder. Old books and weapons and little bottles of poison. Grimm things.

Liliana saw the Grimm's car pull up around the side of the warehouse, out of sight of the street. She watched him pull a double-headed axe and a sword from the back of his car, and shivered a little more, not just from the cold.

She almost reconsidered her plan. Her first mother had been spinnesehen like her, of course. When Liliana's mother and father were killed while Liliana was still adapting to her third eyes, her mother's best friend, a balam, a jaguar wesen, had taken over Liliana's care and education. Both women had been fierce warriors, and had taught Liliana to fight from the time she could barely walk.

Hand-to-hand combat practice had been therapy to her. Both her mothers had used it to help ground her back in reality when her mind got lost in the paths of her new sight.

Spinnesehen were preternaturally fast and agile, blessed with wicked natural weaponry, razor sharp bone blades that folded out from pockets in her forearms, and spinnerets in the wrists that extruded very strong fine silk that could entangle an enemy. Liliana was a formidable fighter, and she had the advantage of being able to see while her enemy would be all but blind in the dark warehouse.

Some spinnesehen could fight with their fourth eyes open, to see what the enemy was going to do before he did it. Liliana hadn't mastered that level of division of consciousness. She was still young for her kind, still three years short of her hundredth year when spinnesehen were considered fully adult. Perhaps she would master that skill eventually. Perhaps she would have mastered it already if her first mother had lived to teach her. A moment of sadness flooded her and she blinked tears from her human eyes.

Even without fourth eyes to let her know what was coming, she had never heard of a spinnesehen losing a fair fight with a single Grimm. It took Grimms in numbers, or striking from cover with the advantage of surprise to defeat her kind.

The quiver in her belly was the nightmares from her childhood still haunting her.

She was an adult now, or close enough. She would face the terror of her childhood and defeat it.

The Grimm entered the warehouse warily through a side door, his gun out, and a flashlight in the other hand. The sword hung at his hip and the axe on his back. The Grimm was not a big man, but he moved like a hunter. The flashlight and the gun moved together. If he caught so much as a glimpse of her, she would die.

Liliana took a deep steadying breath to fight back her fear.

She had crisscrossed the warehouse with her silk lines.

Step into my parlour, said the spider to the fly.

She always liked that quote.

The flashlight the Grimm carried barely scratched a tiny hole in the deep echoing darkness of the empty warehouse.

He was all but blind.

And she was one who sees.

"Anna? Are you here? Anna, come on out and let's talk about this."

Liliana swung down on a line of silk, swooping on him out of the darkness with her forearm blade extended. The first step was to blind him completely, and make sure he didn't shoot her.

She caught both his hands with the blunt side of her extendable arm blade. She could have taken his hands off at the wrists, but she still had some small hope that this wouldn't have to end bloody.

His flashlight and his gun flew out of his hands. The flashlight didn't go out, but it skittered across the littered concrete floor and lay in an island of human visible light in the ocean of darkness.

The Grimm drew the axe from his back while edging toward that light, footsteps grounded and careful, but unaware of the trip lines she had set.

Liliana released the line she rode, caught another and kicked her feet to swing in a long graceful arc. She had spent years on high wire, trapeze, and silk dancing in circuses before she settled in Portland. She found she actually had missed this feeling of freedom. It was almost like flying.

She extended her bare feet in front of her as she swung toward him, intending to knock the Grimm down, hopefully causing him to lose another weapon.

The Grimm sidestepped and swung his axe. He had sensed her somehow, heard her skirt swooshing through the air perhaps.

Liliana desperately arched back as the axe swung over her body close enough for her to feel the wind of its passage. The axe parted her silk line less than an inch from her fingers.

The Grimm had swung high. If he had swung an inch lower, she would have lost half her hand, three inches lower and she would have lost half her head.

Liliana tucked and flipped and landed on her feet, heart pounding in her throat. Even blind, the Grimm had nearly killed her.

The Grimm turned to face her general direction, axe held at the ready in both hands.

Liliana swallowed and breathed deep and slow to try to steady her heart.

The Grimm clearly couldn't see her, but his head tilted slightly as he listened, waiting for her to move, or breathe too loudly.

Liliana moved as silently as she could on her cold bare feet. The ground was littered with scattered junk, old pieces of cardboard, dirt, nails. It was probably a good thing that her kind weren't prone to tetanus. She danced delicately over her own trip lines strung at ankle and knee level.

"Anna, it doesn't have to be this way," the Grimm said. "I just want to ask you a few questions."

Liliana said, "I no longer wish to answer your questions, Grimm. Not when you ask with an axe in your hand."

Liliana realized she had made a mistake when the Grimm oriented on her voice and charged her, axe held high.

She leapt up and caught a line. She scrambled hand over hand as rapidly as she could. She lifted her feet just as the Grimm charged beneath her, one hand held in front of him, searching.

Liliana dropped lightly behind him, but her toe brushed a nail and it scraped on the concrete. She dropped flat to the ground as his axe swung out blindly where she had been a moment before.

His ankle finally caught on one of her lines as he charged again. It yanked his foot out from under him.

The Grimm fell, but managed to keep hold of his axe. He swung down and severed the trip line that tangled his ankle.

Liliana flipped while the Grimm had the axe at full extension in one hand, grabbed it just below the head and cartwheeled away, using leverage and the full weight of her body to wrench the weapon from the Grimm's strong grip.

She was fast. He was strong. Under other circumstances, they might have been more evenly matched, but he didn't react like a fighter who had been as well-trained as she was. And she could see.

She cast the unwieldy weapon away. It clattered loudly against the concrete floor.

She didn't need her fourth eyes to know what the Grimm would do next.

She dove and caught his wrist just as he regained his feet and went for the sword at his hip.

She attached a line to his wrist and yanked him off balamce.

The Grimm stumbled toward her, and used his momentum to turn the stumble into a charge, arms out wide to catch her.

Liliana kept her hold on the line attached to his wrist, while she leapt upward, flipped and landed directly behind him. She caught his free wrist and attached another line as he whirled to face her. She yanked again forcing him to continue his spin, entangling him further. From close behind him, she yanked both lines in opposite directions, yanking his arms crossed behind him. She jumped, flipped over him, and attached the two lines together in front at his waist level.

The Grimm kicked at her. His arms were immobilized, but he was still dangerous.

She dodged and snatched his sword from its sheath. His last weapon clattered into the darkness.

Liliana danced around a roof support pole, holding both lines that attached to the Grimm. She leapt up, caught a line, swung over a girder and dropped down again. The weight of her body dropping from the ceiling dragged the bound Grimm to the roof support pole, standing with his back to it. She wound him round and round with more and more lines.

He struggled and fought, but she kept dancing around him with silk lines until he could barely move. There was no way he could get loose. Her enemy was immobilized and neutralized. He couldn't hurt her now.

Liliana stopped finally. She panted with exertion and adrenaline. She realized she might have overdone the tying a bit. The Grimm was bound securely. Very securely. Her fear still hammered in her heart, but she felt a thrill of triumph.

Liliana had defeated a Grimm.

She fetched his flashlight and set it on its butt end to form a pool of light around the two of them, so the Grimm could see her.

This threat, this nightmare being that haunted her dreams stood helpless before her.

Now, the question was, what would she do with him?


	3. Tiger By the Tail

Chapter 3 Tiger By the Tail

Liliana smiled fiercely showing him her fangs and meeting the Grimm's eyes for a moment in challenge.

The Grimm swallowed and fear shadowed his face. He hid it quickly, but not where she couldn't see. That pleased her and disturbed her at the same time. Uncomfortably, she dropped her eyes to the pulse pounding in his throat. "Anna, let me go," the Grimm said, voice calm, betraying none of the fear that made his pulse race.

"I am not stupid, Grimm, and I am not crazy. If I let you go, I know you will kill me."

"I just want to talk to you."

"Talk to me, then, Grimm." Liliana saw him only with her human eyes and her dark-seeing second eyes. She had kept the others closed as she fought so they would not distract her. "Talk to me without your weapons."

"Did you kill those two men?" he asked.

"No."

"Then why did you do this? Why did you run? Why did you set a trap for me?"

"You are a Grimm," Liliana said. She shrugged. "You were going to kill me."

The Grimm closed his eyes and sighed, letting his head drop back against the steel roof support he was bound to. "I'm not that kind of Grimm."

Liliana tilted her head to the side confused. "There is more than one kind of Grimm?"

"I mean, I'm not the behead first, ask questions afterward, kind of Grimm."

"You believed I was a death spider. You would have killed me if I had not run."

"What's a death spider?"

Liliana tilted her head to the other side. "Are the spinnetod not in your Grimm books?"

"They might be. I saw a Japanese scroll, but I don't read Japanese."

"The females of the spinnetod must kill in the way you described, or they quickly grow old and die."

"And you're not a spinnetod?"

"I am spinnesehen, one who sees." Liliana opened all her eyes and showed him.

"Whoah." The Grimm looked at her face with wonder. "Your eyes are amazing. I just saw them for a moment this morning. I didn't get a chance to really look at them."

She looked at him, really looked, with all her eyes. His heart shone with courage and a compelling need to protect. And love. He was deeply in love. He glowed with it. She saw flashes of a red-haired woman with a gentle smile. Liliana hadn't expected a Grimm to have such a generous heart.

His mind was more like what she would expect from a cop and a Grimm. It churned with possibilities, images of the gruesome murders, images of a woman about her height and build seen on camera at an art gallery with the first man who died. There was suspicion bordering on certainty still in his mind. He believed that she was the killer, but he was willing to listen, to consider other possibilities. She had a chance.

"Did you come here to kill me?" she asked him, and studied his face with every eye.

His eyes dropped from hers. "Not if I didn't have to."

Truth. But a truth he didn't like. He would have taken her head with that axe or put a whole clip full of bullets in her if necessary.

If she had not attacked him, he had intended to arrest her, bring her in for questioning, like a cop would. Not kill her because she was wesen, like a Grimm would. But he was a Grimm. The moment she attacked him, he fought with intentionally deadly force. She attacked him. Therefore she was guilty, and he had to kill her.

He really had come to speak with her. He brought the weapons because he suspected the trap. There was a great deal of fear in him. He didn't want to die as the other two men had.

"It is a horrible death," Liliana said and shuddered. She saw the victims in the Grimm's mind. Murdered men with faces melted with acid and bodies shriveled, sucked dry from the inside. She would see their gruesome faces in new nightmares now. She closed her eyes to shut out the horror, but it was too late. She could not unsee.

The Grimm's face showed that fear plainly now, even to her human eyes. Her intimate knowledge of the manner of the men's death was more evidence to him that she had killed them. And that he was next.

She touched his cheek, seeking to reassure. "I will not kill you if I don't have to. If I do kill you, I promise it will be quick and clean, not like that."

His lips twisted with irony. "Thanks, I guess."

She had not reassured him. She didn't know how to communicate that she didn't want to kill someone who shone with love and courage, even if he was a Grimm. She opened her eyes again and let the shining soul she saw wash away the memory of ugly death. "You are … beautiful."

She had actually planned this trap believing she would most likely have to kill the Grimm so she could go back to her cozy home and life. The Grimm knew who she was now. If she let him go, she would never be safe in Portland. She shivered in the chill, rubbing her arms. Now, what would she do?

She sighed. She couldn't kill him just because he was … inconvenient. She was ashamed that she had even thought that way.

She would have to begin a new life somewhere else. Perhaps she could tolerate the circus life again for a time. She had missed the freedom of the high trapeze and dancing in the sky held only by silken sashes. Performing had been one thing she had loved about circus life.

Her second mother had been an animal tamer. Liliana had liked the big cats, too. That part hadn't been so bad.

But what should she do with the Grimm? He still believed she was a killer, so she couldn't let him go until she was far away and safe.

"Are you going to let me go now?" the Grimm asked as if following her train of thought, something people rarely did.

"I like tigers," Liliana said.

"Huh?"

She had made a mental jump and lost him. The more eyes she had open, the more pieces of her mind operated at once, and the less her mind worked like a human mind. Her thoughts became particularly different when she used the parts of her mind that interpreted her third set of eyes, the ones that saw into hearts and minds, and her fourth eyes, the ones that saw things that were not in front of her.

It made communication harder. "Tigers are beautiful and deadly." She reached out and touched the Grimm's black hair, pushing a lock of his bangs away from his pretty blue eyes. "I have a tiger in a trap. I don't want to kill something so beautiful, but if I let it free, it will eat me."

"Look, I told you. I'm not that kind of Grimm." She saw a note of hurt in him. It bothered him that she feared him so much, as if she insulted him by being afraid of him.

"You are my nightmare, the terror of my childhood," she told him.

"I know. I hear that a lot. But I'm not like the Grimms in the stories."

Liliana shrugged and fiddled with the edge of her sleeve. "You still intend to kill me. You still fear that I am the death spider."

"You're the only spider wesen I know of in Portland."

"There is a spinnetod you can talk to, one who will not eat you, although she may not wish to speak to a Grimm." Perhaps Charlotte could explain to him that Liliana was not the killer. She would be long gone by then, but it meant something to her that this Grimm would not think badly of her. And he would be less likely to try to hunt her down.

"Where can I find this spinnetod?" The Grimm's mind considered the possibility that the spinnetod Liliana named would be the murderer he sought.

"She is not the one." Liliana told him. "She has chosen to die slowly, rather than kill again."

"Tough choice."

"It is the only choice given to the death spiders. It makes me sad for them. Charlotte came to me to ask me what would happen if she could manage to fight her instincts and not kill. I told her, and she chose. People come to me for truth, not the pretty lies that false seers sell." Liliana told the Grimm where to find the spinnetod who Liliana considered her friend.

She saw in her fourth eyes that Charlotte still kept her vow and waited for death to claim her. Charlotte was not the murderer the Grimm sought, and this particular Grimm would not kill her just for being wesen, so there was no betrayal of Charlotte's trust.

"Is there anything else you can tell me about the murders?" He didn't trust her, but he had seen her eyes, all of them. He believed that she could see what he could not and was willing to let her try to convince him.

"Spinnetods kill in threes," she told the Grimm. "If there have been only two murders, one more man will die soon."

She saw the Grimm's determination to kill her before she could murder another innocent man cement in his mind. She felt frustrated. Telling him another man would die had been a mistake.

She had intended to help him find the real murderer, thus clearing herself.

Liliana searched with her fourth eyes, following the trail in reality, starting with the image of the girl in the surveillance video that the Grimm had seen, and she had seen in his mind. She followed the woman out of the art gallery, saw the man catch up with her. She saw the man try to force the spinnetod to have sex with him when her conscience made her hesitate to kill. He died for it, and Liliana could not feel sad for such a man.

She saw the next man that the spinnetod killed and did feel sad for him. He had done nothing wrong.

She followed the thread of the spinnetod herself, not wanting to see the gruesome dead men again.

She saw another man, a spinnetod male. The killer kissed him and laughed with her daughter, discussing simple things around a dinner table. The child had nearly reached the age when she would have to kill or begin to die. Liliana's heart ached for the mother and the child. She was very glad to be spinnesehen, a spider who sees, not one who must kill or die.

She shook her head. She couldn't tell the Grimm where to find his murderer. "I will not betray the death spider. She only kills as she must to survive, no more. She has as much right to survive as anyone else."

Liliana watched the Grimm's mind for his reaction. Her statement only made him believe more strongly that Liliana was the killer.

She realized that her fangs were what his fear and certainty centered around.

The spinnetod sucked the insides out of their victims with fangs, not like hers which were needle sharp and dropped down even with her teeth, a bit like a movie vampire's, but longer, sharper, and hollow to deliver the venom. The death spider's fangs were much thicker and stuck forward. But to a Grimm who was also a police detective, they would look enough alike to fit the murders. She was standing there talking to a cop with the murder weapon in her hand. Or her mouth, actually.

And he had never heard of the spinnesehen or the spinnetod. He couldn't take her word for it when she said that they were different. Weren't Grimms supposed to be better educated, with all the knowledge of their ancestors passed down in their books?

If she freed this tiger, it would still hunt her down and eat her. She had to find a way to convince him that she was not the killer or she would spend the rest of her life waiting for him to find and kill her.

"There is another thing that people seek from the spinnesehen besides our sight. Our venom."

"Um, you lost me again."

"I am sorry. I do not speak in riddles intentionally." He was beautiful, this Grimm, both on the surface and beneath. To share venom with him would be a pleasant thing. Liliana found she wanted it, once the idea occurred to her.

She smiled at him, showing her fangs. She had defeated the Grimm, Nick Burkhardt. The nightmare was at her mercy. To mark him as her own would please her greatly.

Fear haunted his pretty blue eyes and instead of trying to sooth it, she enjoyed the feeling of power it gave her. Her nightmare was afraid of her.

Liliana fisted her hand in his thick black hair. It reminded her of one of her silken scarves. It was marvelous to touch. She pulled his head to one side. She was tempted to bite his throat. He had a very nice throat. But she might puncture a vein. Muscle was safer to bite.

"Uh … I thought we were just talking here," the Grimm said. He struggled harder against the silk that bound him. It would hold, though, even against a Grimm's strength. Lilliana had been afraid of him when she bound him. She had tied him with enough silk to hold a siegbarste.

"You will not believe my words. So I must show you that I am not the killer."

The Grimm swallowed, adam's apple bobbing. "How are you going to do that?"

"I will show you the difference between a bite from a death spider, and the bite of one who sees."

His voice went up in pitch. "You're going to bite me?"

Liliana smiled with triumphant satisfaction at the Grimm who was afraid of her.

She liked that her nightmare feared her, but this brave man did not deserve to be terrified for his life unnecessarily. "The venom of one who sees frees the inhibitions and the mind, and soothes and heals the body. It is a thing to be shared with lovers. It will not harm you, beautiful Grimm."

"I'll just take your word for that. You don't have to …"

"That is a lie. You only fear my bite because you still believe I am the death spider."

"Um, well, not only that, but yeah. Like you said, horrible way to die."

Liliana unbuttoned the top three buttons of his shirt and pushed the flannel cloth to one side, exposing the top edge of his pectoral muscle. His skin was warm and smooth under her cold hands, with just a light dusting of dark hair. She liked touching him.

"Can't we, um, talk about this?"

Liliana knew the only reason to bite him was that nothing she said would quell his belief that her fangs were deadly murder weapons, so she didn't bother.

The Grimm struggled frantically against the bonds, but he couldn't get away from her.

She bit him.


	4. Spider Bite

Chapter 4 Spider Bite

The Grimm hissed his breath in through his teeth at the sting of Liliana's fangs piercing his flesh.

His scent was gunpowder and steel, sweat and soap. She reveled in it. She licked the trickle of blood from the two small puncture wounds. The taste of him was coppery sweet and salty.

He moaned and she felt the vibration under her tongue.

She looked at his face with all her eyes, smiling at the confused euphoria she saw there.

"See, beautiful Grimm. You are not dying."

"If I am, I'm going to die happy." He chuckled, blinked, and shook his head as if trying to clear it. "If you could bottle that, you could make a fortune."

Liliana nodded. "Spinnesehen venom is worth many thousands of dollars, but I prefer to make my living in other ways, and save my venom for those I choose. Venom is meant to be shared with a lover, but I have not had a lover in some time."

She stroked the sharp cheekbone of the Grimm with the pretty blue eyes, and searched his fuzzy, floating mind and heart. "Do you still believe that I am the killer you seek?"

He chuckled and leaned toward her, touching his forehead to hers. "I get it. You're a lover, not a fighter."

"I defeated a Grimm in single combat."

He laughed again. "It's just an expression."

She saw the Grimm's conviction that she was the killer fading. She clearly had not killed anyone with her fangs. Even under the fog of her venom, he recognized that her bite was not in any way similar to the bite of the spinnetod.

But, he was a Grimm, and he knew what she was now. He might still decide to kill her just to be sure.

She saw in his heart an almost overwhelming need to protect women and children, especially any woman he cared for.

"Kiss me and I will free you," she told him. That would probably do it.

He hesitated, thick brows pulled together as if he was trying to remember something. It took a strong will to resist the suggestibility of her venom. He must really find her true form repulsive. She understood. Most of her lovers had been human since they couldn't see her eyes. A lot of wesen found her eyes unnerving.

Liliana looked into him to see what held him back, expecting a horrific view of herself.

Liliana saw the Grimm's red-haired lady instead. Thoughts of her held him back from Liliana. He had a ring. He was just waiting for the right moment to ask her. He didn't want to kiss another girl and betray his beloved Juliet.

Liliana looked forward in time with her fourth eyes. She saw the moment he sought come to pass in his near future. His lady love would tell him no, because he hid the Grimm aspects of himself from her. She would break his heart for something he could not share with her.

Sadness for him filled her. She stroked his silken hair.

"Sweet Romeo. Your Juliet will have a lifetime of kisses from you if she will but say yes. She can spare a single one for me."

He grinned at her, wide and sparkling and mischievous. Dazzling. "I'll make it a good one, then."

The Grimm was true to his word.

She closed all but the eyes that looked into his heart and mind, as she sank into the taste and textures of the beautiful Grimm.

He kissed with the same passion and purpose that he fought.

In his mind, she saw herself now. He thought she was pretty, and her eyes were fascinating, like exotic jewels embedded in her face. The image of herself inside his mind pleased her.

Liliana found herself envying his red-haired Juliet.

But that was insanity. A Grimm would never have a relationship with a wesen that didn't involve sharp instruments and blood. She kissed him in hope that he would not wish to hunt and kill a woman he had kissed.

She flexed her wrist to extend her right arm blade so she could cut his bonds. She had to kill the tiger in her trap or free him, and she didn't want this Grimm dead, especially not after she had kissed him. She should set him free while the venom made him docile.

The Grimm's eyes widened. "Cool." His first reaction was to admire her natural weaponry. His second thought, piercing through the fog, was that she was going to kill him now. The venom in his system made it virtually impossible for him to really feel fear, but his dark eyebrows drew together again. "Why?" he asked her. "I thought you liked me." Hurt feelings.

Liliana flexed her wrist to sheath her blade back in the natural, all but invisible pocket in her forearm. The Grimm still believed she would kill him, and to be honest, the kiss was not enough to make her feel safe either. "I do like you, beautiful Grimm. I just don't trust you not to kill me in my sleep."

"I wouldn't do that. I'd only kill you when you were awake," he said, with the honesty the venom brought out.

Liliana chuckled. "I am not reassured, but thank you for trying."

There was nothing for it. Liliana would still have to leave town and disappear. And she would have to be somewhere else when the Grimm was freed.

She felt in his pants pockets, then jacket.

He grinned and squirmed as she checked his pants pockets. "Hey, I thought you knew I was taken."

She pulled out his phone and looked at the Grimm's contact list. Hank. His partner. She dialed the number and waited. She got voice mail. She considered leaving a message, but didn't want to leave the Grimm tied to a post for an unknown amount of time, defenseless, until Hank remembered to check his voice mail.

A Grimm's life had to be a deadly dangerous one. Being defenseless at the wrong moment, or trusting the wrong person, could mean death.

She asked the Grimm, "Besides Hank, who would you trust with your life?"

"Monroe," the Grimm said without hesitation.

She searched his contact list and touched the number for Monroe, home.

A deep male voice answered with a weary sigh. "What do you want this time, Nick?"

"You are Monroe?"

"Yeah, who is this, and how did you get Nick's phone?" The voice had gone from mildly annoyed to tense.

"Nick needs your help." She gave him the address. "How soon can you get here?"

"What kind of trouble is he in?"

Liliana knew the Grimm hid himself from his lady love. Who else did he hide such things from? His closest friend?

"He is in a grim situation." Liliana was proud of herself for managing a sentence with a double meaning.

"Is he hurt?"

She looked at the Grimm. There were two tiny trickles of blood on his chest. Aside from that, the Grimm wasn't even visibly bruised from their fight. "Not seriously. But he cannot defend himself."

"I can be there in twenty minutes."

Liliana put his phone back in the Grimm's jacket pocket.

She left the tiny island of human visible light to collect the Grimm's weapons.

"Anna?" he called to her nervously as she walked away. "You're not going to just leave me like this, are you? You said you'd let me go if I kissed you."

Liliana placed his gun, axe and sword at his feet. "I keep my promises, Grimm. Your friend, Monroe, is coming. He will free you."

"Why won't you?"

"I need to go."

"Where are you going?"

"Somewhere far away where you won't find me, beautiful Grimm. I don't want to kill you, but I also don't want you to kill me."

"You don't have to go. I'll talk to Charlotte, the spinnetod you told me about. If your story checks out, I'll know you didn't murder those men and I'll leave you alone."

"Will you?" Liliana tried opening her fourth eyes, searching for possibilities, but everything was fuzzy regarding this Grimm and her. Turning point. Decisions made in the next few minutes would forge her future path. Liliana's future was fluxing too much for her to see anything solid.

She touched her forehead to his again, standing on tiptoe. "Be well, beautiful Grimm."

"Nick. My name is Nick."

"Nick." Liliana tilted her head to one side, considering. "My name is Liliana. People mostly call me Anna now. But I like Lily. My father used to call me Lily when I was little."

Nick smiled. He had a stunning smile. "Lily," he said. "I like it."

Liliana caught a silk line and swung up into the rafters, into the darkness his eyes could not pierce. In minutes, his friend would be there to save him. She should go.

But she didn't.


	5. The Wolf and the Fox

Chapter 5 The Wolf and the Fox

Liliana shivered even more now, and she couldn't feel her toes. She needed to get out of there, get somewhere safe and warm and far away before the Grimm got free. Instead, she huddled in a little ball on the high girder in the warehouse where she had trapped the Grimm, the end of her skirt tucked under her toes.

She had cleared the floor level of silk lines so the Grimm's friend would not trip, but left many of the higher lines.

She looked down at the Grimm with her human eyes, bound and helpless in his tiny island of light.

He didn't look scary.

She studied her feelings, turning them over and over. Was she afraid of him, still?

A little. Yes.

Then she should go.

But she didn't. She watched him from above, with all her eyes.

She probably should have been watching with her fourth eyes for his friend to come, but she couldn't really focus on anything but the shining figure of the Grimm, lit in the darkness. He looked … vulnerable. Anyone could kill him if they found him now, and Grimms had a lot of enemies.

He struggled with his bonds periodically, probably just out of boredom. The immediate euphoric effects of her venom should have worn off by now. He probably wouldn't notice the subtle healing effects until later.

This Grimm, Nick, wasn't anything like what she had expected.

Her emotions swirled through all the compartments of her mind, leaving her paralyzed with indecision from conflicting desires, thoughts, fears.

While she struggled with herself, the small side door that Nick had come in through opened. Two people came in.

Liliana had all her eyes open so she immediately saw them for what they were, a tall blutbad man in a sweater with wild curly hair and a pretty fuschbau woman with long brown hair. Both were armed, the wolf with a baseball bat, the fox with a revolver. She recognized the blutbad. He fixed one of her clocks once, three years before. She didn't remember his name.

The Grimm was the only thing in the huge dark warehouse that was lit. They couldn't fail to see him, and to see that he was unable to fight. It would seem to them like a golden opportunity for a couple of wesen to eliminate the threat of a Grimm.

Liliana measured silk carefully, unsheathed her arm blades, then jumped.

She used the same trick to disarm the fox that she had used on the Grimm, then swung back around to disarm the wolf.

The wolf woged so his superior night vision could track her.

He waited for her with the bat like a man at home plate waiting for the pitch.

She didn't alter course, as if she intended to fly right into that batter's swing.

At the last possible moment, she swung her body and arched up, like a high jumper twisting over the bar. The bat swished just under her. She felt its passage through her hair.

She twisted and landed beside the blutbad as he spun clear around. The bat again came at her head.

As she ducked under the strike, she raised her left arm, blade out. It caught the bat and stuck in it as she let the blow twirl her around. She used the force of the wolf's own strike to help yank the weapon from his hand. She ended the spin with the wolf's bat stuck on her left arm blade and her right arm blade high up at the wolf's throat.

"Yield, wolf. I have no quarrel with you, but I will not let you kill this Grimm." She watched the fox from her peripheral vision to make sure she made no hostile moves toward the helpless Grimm.

"Kill him?" the wolf said, looking confused.

"Lily, it's okay," the Grimm said, chuckling. "That's Monroe. You called him."

Without moving her arm from the blutbad's throat, she tilted her head so that some of her eyes pointed toward the Grimm. "Your closest friend, the one you trust with your life, is a blutbad?!"

"Yeah."

Liliana's world turned completely sideways. There was no version of reality where that made sense. "And the fox?"

"She's my friend, too," the Grimm said.

Liliana didn't move, arm blade still at the wolf's throat, frozen in confusion, head cocking one way, then the other.

"Lily, weren't you going to leave before they got here?" the Grimm asked gently.

"The world is a dangerous place, especially for Grimms," Liliana said, not certain if he would understand why she stayed, or even if she understood why.

She looked at the wolf, opened all her eyes and studied him. He had the core of wildness and hunger that all wolves had, carefully damped and controlled. Above that was music and intricate, meticulous craftsmanship. He was … gentle, if such a word could ever be applied to a wolf. "You are friend to a Grimm?" she asked him incredulously, watching for falsehood in his answer.

"Yeah," the wolf said carefully, her blade still touching his throat. "I'm his friend. I'm here to help."

She saw truth.

Liliana backed slowly away from the wolf until her heel touched the toe of Nick's shoe, blades still held up defensively to the wolf and the fox. She saw truth in the wolf's mind, but she couldn't quite believe it. She had never doubted her eyes before, but this just didn't make sense.

She realized suddenly where she stood, back to the Grimm, blades to the wesen. She trusted her back more to the Grimm than to the gentle wolf. Things had shifted in the twisting maze of her mind so much more than she could process. She needed to go home. She was cold and confused and tired.

She shivered hard enough that her blades shook.

"Lily, it's okay. I trust him," Nick said.

She looked at him with every eye.

"I'm safe now," he told her.

Liliana looked at the still bound and defenseless Grimm and saw truth. Liliana stood there with her blades out, the spider wesen that he had accused of murder and tried to kill with an axe. The wolf stood there, the scent of past shed blood lingering in his soul. The fox stood there, holding her hand where Liliana's blow had bruised it while taking away her gun.

And Nick believed it when he said he was safe. He no longer feared her at all. Nor did he fear the wolf or the fox. They were his closest friends. What sort of Grimm counted wesen as his closest friends?

A Grimm she did not need to fear?

"Nick," she said, looking into his handsome face with all her eyes. "Am I safe?"

"Yeah, you're safe, too, Lily. I believe you didn't kill those men." He met her human eyes with his. Her six other open eyes didn't bother him as they often did others.

Truth. She saw truth.

His emotions were layered. There was amusement and embarrassment on the surface for the situation he found himself in, shaded with guilt for trying to hurt her, and an awed sort of gratitude that she protected him when he had tried to kill her.

No fear.

She looked down. The intensity was too much to bear for long, like staring into a bright light.

But if the Grimm didn't fear her, then he wouldn't hunt her. An amazing sense of relief swept over her.

She shook the wolf's bat off her arm blade and flicked her wrists to sheath them both. She stepped aside, letting Monroe get to Nick.

The wolf began cutting Nick free of her web using the sharp sword she had laid at the Grimm's feet.

Lily stepped into the shadows, rubbing her arms and shivering.

She could go now.

She looked up to find a good rafter line to swing away on.

"Lily, wait," Nick said. "Monroe, give her your sweater."

"What! My mom knitted me this sweater. No way."

"She's freezing. She's been stuck in this warehouse all day with just a thin dress, no coat or shoes. Give her your sweater. She'll give it back. Won't you Lily?"

He cast the question into the darkness. He couldn't see her, but he knew she was still there.

"I'll give it back," she said.

The wolf rolled his eyes. "Seriously. You want the sweater off my back now. What's next?" He pulled the thick sweater off over his head and held it out to Lilliana. Nick might not be able to see her, but the wolf and the fox could see her fine.

She took the sweater at arms extreme reach and hopped back from the wolf warily. She pulled the sweater on, still warmed by the wolf's body. The loose soft sweater swallowed her slender form, falling to below her hips. It was heavenly, all soft thick yarn with no scratchy labels.

"Thank you," she whispered. That was an easy social rule to remember, to say thank you when someone handed you something, but it meant something more. While the wolf grumbled, she had seen in his heart that he was glad to give her warmth, glad that he could help. There was guilt there, too, but she wasn't sure why.

It was time for her to go. She jumped, caught a rafter line, but she had a strange desire for Nick to see her leave.

Liliana leapt up, swung on a second line around the post he was still partially tied to, swung clear around it once in a tightening arc until her feet touched the post itself, just above Nick's head. She leapt then, caught her line and swung into a high flying flip, as if she flew from trapeze swing to swing.

Behind her, she heard laughter and the Grimm's voice. "Now, you're just showing off."

She landed on a girder and ran along it as if it were as wide as a road, grinning as she did. It was truth, she had to admit. She left through the small access panel in the roof that she had found earlier.

She watched what happened in the warehouse with her fourth eyes for a time, as she walked away.

"She bit you!" Monroe said, as he noticed the tiny puncture wounds on his chest. "Oh, god, Nick. Are you okay?"

Nick shrugged. "I feel okay."

"Lucky you," the fox girl said.

"Lucky?" Monroe said. "He got bit by a spider wesen. He could die!"

The fox snorted a laugh. "He's been bitten by a spinnesehen. There are people who would pay a fortune for that privilege."

Nick's brows drew together. "Why so much? There are a lot of drugs on the street that give a longer lasting high."

"The high is just a side effect. Do you have any old injuries that aren't fully healed?" the fox asked.

"Yeah, my shoulder and ribs still ache sometimes where that siegbarste tossed me around."

"How do they feel now?"

Nick rolled his arm, took a deep breath, and his face lit with wonder. "No pain at all. I feel great."

"Spinnesehen are all female and they live a long time. They share venom with their mates, so their mates live as long as they do. If you were likely to die of old age, she would have just extended your lifespan by several years."

"Wow, that's awesome," Monroe said.

"Awesome?" Nick clenched his jaws, and anger touched his voice. "I could have killed her." He poked the blutbad in the chest with a finger. "You told me Anna was the only spider wesen in Portland, and probably the killer. She's not even the right kind of spider. She said I should talk to a woman named Charlotte."

"Charlotte? The spinnetod?" Monroe said. "Yeah, I know her, but she couldn't be the killer. Anna fits the description you gave me. Charlote clearly doesn't."

The fox put her hand on her hips and shook her head at both of them. "Monroe, are you telling me you don't know the difference between a spinnetod and a spinnesehen?"

Monroe shrugged. "Well, yeah. That's obvious. Spinnetods don't have all those weird eyes." Monroe shuddered. "But they're both spiders."

The fox shook her head in amazement. "That's like saying a balam and a mauvais dentes are the same because they're both cats."

"Well, they're close."

The fox rolled her eyes.

Liliana finally let her tired fourth eyes close as the Grimm, the wolf and the fox continued to bicker in the warehouse she had left far behind. It was clear that Nick believed her now and neither he nor his wesen friends had any intention of doing her harm.

She went home; to her own home, to her own warm cozy bed, where everything was exactly where it should be.

Instead of nightmares about Grimms coming to chop off her head, she dreamed of a smiling Grimm with pretty blue eyes who kissed her and gave her a sweater.


End file.
